#11 The Little Trojan That Could: The Chris Limahelu story

By Ben David Duncan

An exciting story of the immigration struggles of an Indonesian family. Fleeing their home country, they spent ten years in Dutch immigrant camps. After receiving permission they came to America, with a dream of freedom! One family member took that dream and reached the impossible! Young Chris made his way, through countless obstacles, to establish his name in U.S.C. football lore. This pint-sized nobody, etched his name into Trojan and Rose Bowl history! Few gave him a chance to succeed in a game of giants. He wouldn't be denied! Earlier, he met a young coach from Oklahoma. Although Chris and "Coach D" came from totally different backgrounds, they teamed to develop a new kicking style in California high school football. The rest is history! The kid, with a big heart, taught us to "reach for the stars!" Chris Limahelu will always be: "#11 - The Little Trojan That Could!"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643006642

Book preview

9781643006642_cover.jpg

#11 -

The Little Trojan

That

Could

The Chris Limahelu Story

Ben David Duncan, PhD

ISBN 978-1-64300-663-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64300-664-2 (Digital)

Copyright © 2018 Ben David Duncan, PhD

All rights reserved

First Edition

None of this book content, cover or related marketing materials or activities imply that this publication has been officially authorized or endorsed by the University of Southern California.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to all those young students and athletes that made my years at South Hills High School a special experience. I will cherish those memories, forever!

To Al, Robert, Frank, Henry Rocky, Julie and Pat, the Limahelu siblings . . . a huge thank you for providing the input that made this story much more accurate and meaningful.

To my long-time friend, John Douglas Miller, PhD. I can’t thank you enough, for your expert guidance in the writing of this book. Your willingness to help, in the early days of this writing, was evidence of a true friend. As an experienced author, your input was invaluable! Since childhood, we have shared many wonderful times. Thank you for adding this to our memory bank!

Finally, my sincere love to my entire family. My wife, Alice . . . our children, David, Sara, Amy, Leslie . . . our grandchildren, Ellie, Hayden, Evan, Gavin, Duncan, Emery, Mason, Sadie, Landry, Delaney . . . our son-in-laws, Jay & Brett . . . and all the other members of my wonderful Duncan Clan! You put sunshine in my life. I Love You . . . All!

Introduction

On a bright, sunny day in late April 2010, a Southwest Airlines plane touched down at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California. On board, was an aging ex-coach traveling from Edmond, Oklahoma. I was that coach. I was there to attend the funeral of Chris Limahelu. Chris had recently passed away, succumbing to prostate cancer. I was Chris’s former high school football coach and a big fan of his accomplishments. As a young man, he had struggled to overcome obstacle after obstacle, both on and off the football field. At five’- three" and 120 lbs., the Indonesian immigrant entered a sport of giants and became one of the outstanding kicking specialists of that era!

I made my way to Covina, which was Chris’s hometown. I spent the night at the home of Jack Nemzek, a friend and former coaching colleague. In the late sixties, Jack and I coached Chris while he was a student at South Hills High School in West Covina. Chris came to South Hills totally unknown to any of the coaches. Coach Nemzek was the first to see Chris, as an athlete. In addition to his football coaching duties, Jack was also the varsity wrestling coach. It was on the wrestling mat that Chris first exhibited his athletic abilities. As a freshman, he had excelled in wrestling and tennis. Because he did not play football that first year, neither Jack nor I had any idea about his kicking skills. Beginning with his sophomore year, Chris decided to play football . . . and the rest is history! Jack and I spent the evening reminiscing about our years together and sharing stories of our days with Chris. We both held fond memories of those days. We agreed that our time with Chris represented a special experience with an amazing young man. We would never forget those special years!

Chris’s brother, Frank, had asked me to speak on behalf of the South Hills coaches at Chris’s funeral. He asked me to share memories of the times that Chris was a part of our program. Although extremely honored, I knew it would be difficult to keep my composure as I spoke about what Chris meant to me. That small Methodist church was crowded with people who knew and admired Chris. There were former high school and college teammates, business associates, friends, and family. When I made my way to the podium, I took a deep breath. As I spoke, I tried not to focus on any one individual. That was difficult because I was standing in front of the entire Limahelu family. In the front row was Chris’s mother, Juliana. Next to her was his only sister, Juliette, and his brothers Al, Robert, Frank, Henry, Rocky, and Pat. Many nieces, nephews, and in-laws filled the next two rows. I had known most of the Limahelu siblings as they passed through South Hills. Several of the brothers followed Chris as kickers for the South Hills football program. It was as if I was speaking to each of them individually. As I recalled those years at South Hills, the tears flowed freely. I had to stop several times to compose myself.

I began,

Ours was a friendship that began on the football field, continued through Chris’s USC years and persisted through the next four decades. I had great admiration for Chris, a young man who would not be discouraged. He just would not take no for an answer. What Chris accomplished was legendary! No one gave him much of a chance to be successful. No one could see just what he had in his heart. His time on this earth was relatively short but while he was here, he made his mark. His spirit remains deeply embedded in USC Trojan lore. I’m sure that I speak for all of you when I say that Chris will, forever, be in our hearts!

When the service ended, we all paid our respects to the family and left, carrying with us our own private memories of Chris Limahelu. His story was truly, unique! Throughout his youth, he was told that he was just too small to be successful in football. Amazingly, never once did he falter. It was his quest to prove his naysayers wrong. Even though Chris and I only worked together for the three years he played varsity football, we remained close friends for the rest of his life. It had been a blessing to know Chris and his amazing family!

As the years passed, I learned more about their incredible journey. It began on the island of Java, continued through the refugee camps of Holland, and ended in the United States of America. This is a story of an immigrant family exhibiting courage, dedication, and a never-give-up attitude. This is the saga of how Chris, along with his family, faced all challenges and achieved the American Dream! Let us all take a journey through the life of Chris Limahelu and his family. He was #11, The Little Trojan That Could!

1

The American Hero

As Humphrey Bogart once said in the movie, The Maltese Falcon,

This is the stuff that dreams are made of!

In another movie, a scrub named George Gipp walked on the hallowed field at Notre Dame and dazzled a skeptical Knute Rockne with a piece of broken-field running that ultimately placed his name with the football stars of history. It was a fictional baseball player, Roy Hobbs, years past his prime, consigned to the oblivion of the fictional New York Knights’ dugout . . . until one day, he proceeded to hammer the stadium walls and lights with a bat he called Wonderboy. These are dreams that seem deeply embedded in our American psyche. We have seen them in movies or read them in novels and short stories. It is the American Dream!

Imagine this, the year is 1951. There are five seconds left to play in a game that will decide the Ivy League championship. Princeton trails Harvard by one point. The Tigers have the ball on Harvard’s thirty yard-line. There are only two ways to win. We could try a long Hail Mary pass into the end zone, but our quarterback, a guy named Fogarty, can barely throw the ball that far. In addition, neither of our Princeton receivers could catch it if he did! The other possibility would be to attempt a field goal, but no one on our Tiger team has ever kicked one measuring more than twenty yards. To make things worse, our field goal kicker, the second-string fullback, is nursing a sprained ankle!

To quote that famous old-timey radio and TV philosopher, Chester A Riley,

What a revolting development this is!

About that time, one of the assistant coaches shouts,

What about Johannsen?

Another assistant quickly answers,

Johannsen the water boy? Why, he’s not even suited up. What makes you think he could go out there and kick a forty yard field goal?

The first coach continues,

I’ve seen him do it in practice. I’ve seen him kick a thirty-five yarder.

All the other coaches think that this is a ridiculous suggestion. Even the coach who came up with the idea knows that he is suggesting a very improbable—if not impossible—task. Oh, not so fast, American readers and movie fans! You know better than that! In this story, Johannsen quickly dons a uniform. He takes to the field, makes the kick, and wins the game! His delirious Princeton teammates carry him off the field on their shoulders, while the Harvard men, heads down, drag themselves into their locker room. We sigh and get up to leave the theater or put down the book and say,

"Wouldn’t it be great if things like that could happen in real life?"

Well, sports fans, I am about to tell you a story that is even more unlikely than this fictional one about Johannsen, the water boy from Princeton. My story differs from Johannsen’s story in several ways. The main difference between the two stories is that my story is true! I know it’s true because I am that coach who pleaded with my colleagues to use a five-foot-three, hundred-fifteen-pound nobody as an offensive weapon on our high school varsity football team! That nobody was a high school sophomore immigrant from the island of Java in Indonesia! He and his brother, along with their parents, fled to Holland to escape government oppression. For the next ten years, they lived in crowded immigrant camps provided for them by the Dutch government. While in these camps, their family grew with the births of four boys and a girl. Finally, in 1962, they received permission to immigrate to the United States in search of their American Dream!

This is a story of determination, courage, and a never-give-up attitude passed down from Abraham and Juliana Limahelu to their children. Coming from very meager immigrant beginnings, they refused to be victims. This courageous couple, along with their eight children, were about to embark on a journey to a new life in a new land. Get ready, America, here come the Limahelus!

2

What Is Football?

Have you ever noticed that sometimes a word seems to have little to do with actually describing its true meaning? Take the word football, for example. Whatever that American game is, it is not football! In fact, other than running and kicking a ball, there is no compelling reason for a reasonable person to call it anything other than . . . well, perhaps this is the problem. What should we call it and why would anyone ever imagine that football was a proper title?

Go anywhere in the world, other than here in America, and say Football. Chances are, people will think that you meant soccer. It is a term that has little to do with the game it identifies. Soccer is indeed football because you play it almost exclusively with your feet. It is a game for which I never developed any interest in nor had as much as a nodding acquaintance with how it was played. Soccer and American football diverged from one another in the late nineteenth century. They came back together with the use of the kick in the mid-twentieth century. American football actually evolved out of English rugby, which they played at Eaton and Harrow, as early as the Napoleonic era! According to my rudimentary knowledge, Walter Camp introduced a similar game at Yale about fifty years later, but with a few significant changes. He put in the scrimmage line, for one thing, and the down and distance rules, for another.

All this history is slightly academic and perhaps irrelevant to the story I am telling. What is neither academic nor irrelevant is the type and shape of the ball they used in American football, back at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a rugby ball, rounder and blunt on both ends. It was shorter than the ball we use in the modern game. The rugby-shaped ball made the game more football-like than the game of today. A common way to score in those early days was the dropkick. The ball is dropped in front of the kicker. Because of its blunt end, it would bounce straight up, allowing the kicker to strike the ball with his toe. The dropkick is a method used to kick extra points, field goals, and even kickoffs. Because of the change in the shape of the ball, it tends to bounce more erratically, making it more difficult to kick in this manner. This type of kick has since long gone into history’s rubbish heap, along with the Pony Express and the dial telephone. The last time I ever saw anyone use the dropkick was in 2006 when 43-year-old Doug Flutie kicked an extra point against the Miami Dolphins. It was the first dropkick since 1941!

The forward pass changed everything. In the early 1900s, a couple of college footballers played at an obscure college called Notre Dame. They came up with a unique idea. While working as lifeguards at an Ohio lake, they began to play catch with that rugby-shaped football. They got the idea that the player receiving the ball from the center could throw it over the rushing defenders to another offensive player who crossed the line of scrimmage into the opposing backfield. The year was 1913. Woodrow Wilson occupied the White House, and the Titanic had been resting on the North Atlantic sea floor for barely a year. On November 1, 1913, the forward pass was unveiled in a game, pitting a highly favored Army team against a then unknown Notre Dame. The two Notre Dame Players, Knute Rockne and Gus Dorias, teamed up to complete fourteen of seventeen passes for 243 yards. When the whistle blew at the end of the game, the score was 35–13, in Notre Dame’s favor. The forward pass was born!

It did not take long for other teams to get the news. What took place, reminded me of a limerick I heard many years ago:

There was a young man from Depew,

Who found a dead mouse in his stew.

Said the waiter, "Don’t shout or wave it about,

or all the others will want one, too!"

Soon, many other teams were experimenting with this new concept. The game quickly moved farther away from its rugby beginnings. The ball became more elongated and somewhat streamlined to accommodate the forward pass. This change effectively cut almost all connections to the early game of football. It evolved into the game we see, today! Call it football, if you wish. The change in the shape of the ball rendered the dropkick much less of an offensive weapon, not totally useless but extremely limited. It would be like taking a knife to a gunfight!

Following the change in the shape of the ball, few teams still used the kick as an offensive weapon. During the late forties and fifties, the name that stood out was Lou The Toe Groza. He was well-known to my generation. For many years past his retirement, he held the record for the most points in a career. There were no kicking specialists in those days. The kickers of that era also played another position on their respective teams. Groza was an All-Pro offensive tackle. George Blanda, another kicker, high up in the record books, was an outstanding quarterback. Those men were kicking field goals and extra points the way everyone kicked them until the sixties. They approached the ball head-on, with a teammate holding the ball vertically on a small platform called a tee. They approached the ball and kicked straight forward, trying to strike the ball down low with enough force to send it over the goal post’s horizontal bar. That is exactly how I kicked as a boy in high school. Did it work? I suppose it did. Both Groza and Blanda are in the Hall of Fame! With Groza and Blanda as the exceptions, most early kickers were limited to about thirty yards.

Let’s suppose that we are in a closely fought game. We are behind by two points with three seconds on the clock and thirty yards from the goal line. What happens now? The verdict, we are probably going to lose. To win, we need someone to kick a forty-yard field goal. Hold on, someone might say,

You are only thirty yards away from a score!

That’s true, but the goal posts are ten yards deep in the end zone. You would have to add another ten yards, and we do not have a Groza! Our only hope would be to rush all our receivers into the end zone and launch a Hail Mary, praying that one of those receivers will catch it. I do not actually know what the odds for success would be, but they would be slim. Would anyone in his or her right mind be willing to put money on this one?

With the introduction of the forward pass, the kick remained as a last-gasp offensive weapon through the first half of the twentieth century. On offense, it was limited primarily to extra points. My high school years spanned from 1953–1956. About that same time, a young soccer player moved from Poland to Upstate New York. Enter Pete Gogolak. He was very disappointed when he discovered that his high school did not play soccer! Later, Gogolak would make a name for himself at Cornell, the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL). Pete recalled,

I couldn’t believe that I wouldn’t be able to play the sport I loved! The only thing similar to the sport he played in Poland was what the Americans called football.

My only choice was to try this new form of football, American style, so I became the kicker for my high school team.

Pete had to overcome a few obstacles as he began to adjust to this new sport.

I wasn’t very comfortable, wearing that heavy helmet and those bulky shoulder pads. With all those distractions, I struggled to get that odd-shaped ball airborne!

After his first season, Pete became more accustomed to his new sport. He began to excel with a style that no one had ever seen! After high school, Gogolak decided to try college football. He enrolled at Cornell University and became one of the first to use that soccer-style kick at an American university. As a Cornell senior in 1964, Pete kicked a fifty-yard field goal! That was the longest field goal, at that time and, strangely, still did not draw much attention. Following graduation from Cornell, Pete got a tryout with the Buffalo Bills of the AFL. Pete recalled,

I put on a show, drilling one kick after another from several distances!

Pete was not the only one impressed. The scout for the Bills remarked,

I had never seen anyone kick like that . . . and with such distance!

Needless-to-say, after the scout saw him kick, Gogolak received a contract with the Buffalo Bills. In 1964, Gogolak played in his first pro game. He electrified the crowd with a fifty-seven